Senator
boldly goes once more into the Northern maze Analysis: George Mitchell is
back again in Stormont, trying to find a way around the impasse.
Gerry Moriarty reports
From IRISH TIMES September 7th, 1999
It was a damp day and a damp start to the Mitchell review at Stormont. Pathetic
fallacy, if memory serves, is what we learned at school: the elements conspiring
to reflect the prevailing political mood. Ominous or what? What's more,
there appeared to be a conspiracy to sideline the press. As the rain beat
down outside Castle Buildings yesterday one reporter observed, "How can you have a circus when there's no tent?" That was a reference to the breathtaking
lack of media facilities for this, surely, final attempt to save the Belfast
Agreement.
No marquee or Portakabins, as during other crisis talks, or tables or chairs
or sockets for reporters to plug in their laptop computers so that they
could work on site, so to speak. The word from Stormont insiders was that
the move to make life as difficult as possible for the press came from some
of the parties, particularly from elements within the Ulster Unionist Party.
And it seems that former US senator Mr George Mitchell, who described himself
as review "facilitator", might also have sympathy with this view.
There was a suggestion in the final weeks leading to the Belfast Agreement
last year that the talks would move to some private location abroad where
the concluding work could be done away from the media glare. That never
happened but the argument was that too much media focus unsettled nervous
politicians who in front of the cameras were too afraid to do a deal. This
argument became more pronounced during the failed negotiations in late June/early
July.
There was a smell of an agreement when the Way Forward document was published
but with Drumcree looming and the UUP riven with division, and the media
recording it all, that enterprise collapsed ignominiously. Yesterday, today
and tomorrow is about establishing the ground rules and agenda for the rest
of the review. Part of that business appears to be devising a plan that
would allow progress to be achieved - and that may involve a new strategy
of keeping the press on the run.
Mr Mitchell met the UUP, the SDLP, the DUP and Sinn Féin yesterday. He is
meeting the rest of the parties and the British and Irish governments over
today and tomorrow. The remainder of the week is left free to cater for
the fallout from Thursday's Patten report on policing, and, if that hasn't
scuppered everything, Mr Mitchell will return to the North next Monday for
more serious business - he hopes. Rather than concentrating all action at
Stormont, as heretofore, Mr Mitchell spoke of holding meetings at party
offices or at other locations.
That way it might be possible to maintain some degree of confidentiality
- and provide space for the UUP and Sinn Féin negotiators in particular
as they try to conjure some solution to what at the moment is the intractable
problem of guns and government. Mr Mitchell told the politicians he had
"no magic wand" to break the deadlock. But he reminded them that with power
came responsibility and that involved "having the courage and wisdom to find a way to overcome the obstacles". He may be more assertive this time
around.
He refused to disclose whether at the end of this initiative he would make
a judgment and issue his own proposals for a solution to the impasse, which
the parties could either reject or accept. At the moment he wants the parties
to find their own solution, but there was also a hint that some weeks down
the road - he wouldn't state definitively how long he is prepared to stay
here - he might devise his own blueprint for the way forward.
Mr Mitchell was firm in resisting pressure to have this review cover a broad
range of issues: it was simple, it was about decommissioning andthe formation
of an executive, he insisted. In the downpour outside Castle Buildings,
there was no sign of a break in the cloud of political despair and recrimination.
Mr Seamus Mallon - leading the SDLP negotiators in the absence through illness
of John Hume - complained that during the summer unionists cited the marching
season for not striking a deal, and now they were citing the Patten report.
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